


Sleepover

by VioletSmith



Series: Suits You Fine [2]
Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: Cohabitation, Disney princess pyjamas, Dreams and Nightmares, Holding Hands, Intimacy, M/M, Nightmares, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Queerplatonic Relationships, Sharing Clothes, Tequila
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-29
Updated: 2020-01-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:28:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22470340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VioletSmith/pseuds/VioletSmith
Summary: Dirk sometimes has nightmares. Todd knows this.
Relationships: Todd Brotzman & Dirk Gently, Todd Brotzman/Dirk Gently
Series: Suits You Fine [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1616671
Comments: 11
Kudos: 56





	Sleepover

**Author's Note:**

  * For [celestialskiff](https://archiveofourown.org/users/celestialskiff/gifts).



Dirk sometimes has nightmares. Todd knows this.

It’s not like on TV, Dirk doesn’t thrash around or cry out in the night. There’s no real sign at all, apart from the next day when he’s even paler than usual, and bouncing off the walls a little more frantically, and he doesn’t eat, and when Todd asks “How did you sleep?” he takes a second to answer “fine.”

Todd’s never been very good at stuff like this. He’s not a naturally nurturing person, doesn’t have instincts that tell him to offer… a hug or whatever. He doesn’t even like hugs, particularly. He never has. He pretty much just likes to be left alone. But then Dirk came into his life, and Dirk is… Dirk is important.

He thinks about bringing it up casually in conversation, but the problem with that is that a) nothing they ever do is casual, somehow, and b) they don’t talk about things. Not things like this.

They talk about things like murder, the nature of existence, and whose turn it is to do the laundry.

They don’t talk about how they’ve started holding hands more often.

Perhaps it’s on the days when Todd notices Dirk’s behaviour is off and he’s probably had a bad night. Perhaps it’s a day when Dirk’s wearing one of Todd’s shirts for no reason at all and it makes Todd’s belly do a little lurch like he’s at the top of a rollercoaster, and he reaches out to straighten the collar where it’s sticking up at the back and his hand lingers a moment too long, finds Dirk’s shoulder, runs down his arm until their fingers are tangled and Dirk squeezes his hand gently and they just… don’t let go.

In the car, on a bus, on the street, sat in their living room watching whatever on Netflix – their hands resting side by side between them, nails painted the same colour, Dirk messing on his phone with his other hand because he’s incapable of paying attention to just one thing at a time, and it’s so easy to cross the few centimetres between them and take Dirk’s hand in his, and watch the way Dirk’s mouth quirks into a smile though he never once looks up from the screen of his phone.

They hold hands, and Todd has mostly stopped caring how it looks. They hold hands and they absolutely don’t talk about it.

So Todd can’t talk about the nightmare situation, he can’t be the one to bring it up because that’s not what they do.

Instead he moves Dirk’s bed closer to his one night, on an impulse he tries not to question too deeply. Dirk wanders in to find him shifting furniture, and frowns.

“What are you doing?”

“Just moving some things around.”

Dirk looks suspicious. “Why?”

Todd grasps for a plausible reason. “The universe seemed to want me to,” he settles on, finally.

Dirk seems happy with that.

He helps to push the wardrobe up against the wall where his bed had been, then goes to the bathroom to change into his night clothes. He comes back toothpaste-smelling, in a pair of very faded and thin Disney princess pyjama bottoms and one of Todd’s t-shirts that Todd thought he’d lost months ago. His smile is one of the private ones that only Todd gets to see. A bit shy, a bit silly. Very Dirk. Todd can’t help smiling back.

That night they lie awake for a long time, feeling face to face. It’s dark, but the street light filters through the blinds enough that Todd can see that Dirk’s eyes are open, that his hands are curled up by his face on the pillow, can see the shape of his body under the thin summer sheets.

When Dirk moves, stretching a hand across the small gap between their beds, Todd thinks he looks as hesitant as he’s ever seen him. But he curls his hand around Todd’s confidently, and Todd turns his hand over to intertwine their fingers. They fall asleep like that, still holding on tight.

They drift apart some time in the night, but that’s okay. It’s good to wake up and know that Dirk is close, closer, it makes something inside Todd settle like a comfortable cat. Even if they can’t really walk between the beds when they’re this close, and the room’s so small it means they both have to sort of crawl to the bottom of the beds to get out of them.

They brush their teeth together at the sink, standing too close.

“It’s like a sleepover,” says Dirk. “I never went on a sleepover.”

All of Dirk’s stories about his childhood are depressing, so Todd doesn’t ask any questions.

*

They hold hands most nights whilst falling asleep. It’s good. It’s normal, actually. As if they’ve been doing this forever, or perhaps as if they _should_ have been. And Dirk doesn’t seem to get as many nightmares any more. Doesn’t seem to get any, in fact, until the night they run out of beer, and Dirk decides it would be a great idea to drink tequila instead because they still have plenty of tequila leftover from the case before last with that thing, you know, with the horns. Todd is still trying to purge the thing with the horns from his memory, and he thinks that tequila can only help with that.

They’re not drunk, but they’re tipsy enough that when they fall into their ridiculously close single beds everything suddenly seems very funny, and they giggle at the ceiling, and Dirk’s hand is warm and familiar in Todd’s and Todd feels this fizzy feeling inside that he decides, after much deliberation, is happiness.

He informs Dirk of this, and Dirk’s giggles fade away, and he informs Todd that it’s quite sad, actually, that happy is such an unfamiliar feeling that Todd has to try to identify it. He touches Todd’s face like he’s trying to memorise his expression.

“You really have no sense of personal space, do you?” Todd asks him, fondly.

“Space is an illusion,” Dirk replies earnestly. “Like time. And magic eye pictures.”

Dirk thinks about eyeliner, and nail varnish, and the shape of Dirk’s legs in tights, and forgets to reply.

The room feels very golden tonight, very fuzzy at the edges. He’s not sure if he’ll have a hangover tomorrow, but he thinks these sleep-foggy hours of Dirk stroking his eyebrows and telling him that “all things are connected, right, everything in the universe is connected… it’s just that we’re _more_ connected” - well, they might be worth it.

Until some time in the night, some time that’s closer to morning than to bed time, when he’s woken by nothing but a sudden sense of wrongness. He opens his eyes to see Dirk seemingly wide awake, lying stiff as a board and whiter than the bed sheets, staring at a spot on the wall just above Todd’s shoulder.

“Dirk?” There’s no response, so Todd reaches out and squeezes his arm gently. “Dirk, buddy...”

Dirk startles, takes a sharp inward breath.

“Todd?”

“Yeah, it’s me.”

“Did I wake you? I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright.” Todd takes Dirk’s hand. “Are you okay?”

“Yes, no, I. It was just a dream.” He tries for a smile, and even in the pre-dawn darkness Todd can see that it fails. “I’m sorry it disturbed you.”

“It’s fine.” Todd doesn’t tell him that he already knew about the bad dreams, had already figured it out months ago. He also doesn’t ask what this one was about. Maybe he should, maybe that’s what a good friend would do. Maybe Todd’s not a good friend. But he just can’t bring himself to. There’s so much in Dirk’s past that frightens him, and that he can’t begin to fix. “You know you can wake me up any time. Even if it’s just to talk about whatever.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Because that’s not what you said before, when I woke you up to ask what Americans call a jam thermometer and you said you would drive to the store and buy one just so you could shove it up my-”

“That was before!” Todd interrupts hastily. “From now on you can wake me up any time.”

There’s a moment’s silence while Dirk considers. “And you promise not to be grumpy?”

Todd is definitely going to regret this. “I promise to try, okay.”

“Okay,” Dirk says, and he settles back down into the bed. Todd is still holding his hand.

“Okay.”


End file.
